Page 54 - THE SLOUGHI REVIEW Issue 15

T H E S L O U G H I R E V I E W 5 4

Thomas Liedtke: "Xavier Przezdziecki was very important to you, wasn't he?"
Of course, he was a good friend and mentor.

Xavier Przezdziecki was an orphan who was raised by Jesuits, and as a young adult he chose
a military career. As a young officer he was sent to Algeria to count the nomads, including

their herds, in order to be able to tax them, where he learnt Arabic and tamaschek (Touareg
language). In this job he also got to know the Sloughis and Oskas. That was around 1930,
later he was transferred to Aleppo in Syria as an information officer, where he also learnt
the Arabic variant. After his military career, he returned to Algeria, where he worked for

certain oil companies. I'm not sure whether he was still doing this in a military capacity.
There he became involved with the Sloughis again and organised his first Sloughi races at
the Cynodrom El Biar. As a young officer, he accompanied Henri Lothe to the famous rock
paintings. He made meticulous notes of all his experiences and illustrated them with very

attractive drawings. He showed me many of them. What impressed me in addition to his
experiences was his thirst for knowledge, which lasted until almost the end. He spent many
years studying scientific books in the Paris libraries and was interested in everything to do
with sighthounds, especially Oriental sighthounds. I have never met anyone with a similar

knowledge and thirst for knowledge. As a person, he was a charming host who also listened
well. He was the first person in France to enter Sloughis in sighthound races and also
organised the first Sloughi race in 1977. Because I was on holiday with him in the area, my
Sloughi at the time was also able to race. He was always committed to the sport of

sighthound racing and even wanted to organise real lure coursing for Sloughis in France
based on the English model, but unfortunately the time for this had already expired. He was
also a sighthound judge and was invited to judge the Sloughis in Morocco.

Xavier Przezdziecki's Gitane, 1935 Syria, near
Aleppo © Przezdziecki